IS A HOT DOG A SANDWHICH?!

Written by Brooklyn Schwartz, 06/11/2025.

I'm going to preface this article by saying I don't eat hotdogs. I don't like them. I have nothing against them, please don't hate me.

“Hotdog”: a cylinder of bread, sliced almost in half, vertically, with a long, cylindrical piece of meat in the middle, often with condiments on top. (I made up that definition but I think I did a pretty good job)

The first place I went was the urban dictionary (I confused it with the oxford dictionary) and it defined a sandwich as “the best food ever” Like cool, not helpful.

So then the oxford dictionary defines a sandwich as “an item of food consisting of two pieces of bread with meat, cheese, or other filling between them, eaten as a light meal”. Which would mean that no, a hotdog is not a sandwich. But because I just really really love doing unnecessary research, we're not gonna stop there.

The FDA (food and drug administration) defines it as “meat or poultry filling between two slices of bread, a bun, or a biscuit” This means many things.

• A hot dog is a sandwich

• A chicken quesadilla is a sandwich

• A grilled cheese is not a sandwich.

• A PB and J is not a sandwich.

However, the FDA is an American administration. So all of that only applies if you are in the US.

Like I guess that's good to know but we're kind of in Canada…. 

Canada’s FDA doesn’t have an official definition, but there’s a couple things we could go off of. 

• Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), for tax purposes, says a sandwich is "consisting of one or more pieces of bread, with meat, cheese, savoury or other topping or filling, all of which are suitable for immediate consumption". So hotdog=sandwich yes.

• The FDA’s RTE classification says sandwiches must be assembled from ready to eat components. Which the meat of the hotdog, since you must cook it, is not. So hotdog=sandwich no.

We are literally getting nowhere.

As a last resort, I asked my friends what a sandwich is. They mostly responded along the lines of “bread with something in between”. But half of them said it had to be two pieces of bread, and the other half didn't!

So in conclusion, I'm too tired for this.